The Spontaneous Weekend: Austin, Texas

GQ, 2007

Cheap barbecue, cheaper beer, nonstop live music, and just about the coolest hotel in the States.

You can’t avoid the slogan, “Keep Austin Weird” as you make your way through Texas’s cultural mecca of 670,000; it’s printed everywhere you look: on bumper stickers, on baby outfits. Disregard it. Austin may have been the quirkiest little town in Texas just a decade ago, but the area’s tech boom (dude, you got a Dell!) and massive music festival (South by Southwest in March)– not to mention The Real World: Austin— have rendered that mantra wishful thinking.